Generating high quality video and images usually requires extensive preparations to insure that the end image is visually appealing. The television and film industries often employ extensive preparations to generate high quality images. Often these preparations include carefully designed lighting which will generate an appealing image.
These precautions generally are not practical for most video and image applications. While video conferencing is increasingly popular, image problems persist in comparison to high quality film and television images. For example, low light or back light may result in poor video images.
In particular, most humans are quite perceptive at detecting image issues related to human facial features and color tone issues. Thus, poor light or lighting changes may result in “washed out” or pale facial features (color tone issues) and other image issues. In video conferencing situations, the lighting and other environmental factors may result in poor image quality. For example, poor lighting, changes in lighting, or changes in orientation and position of an object of interest (e.g., a person changing position with respect to the camera or lighting) may impact the image quality and the image color tone. In comparison to brightness and contrast, color tone perception is generally more subjective to viewer preferences.
Correspondingly, still images are subject to similar difficulties. For example, poor lighting may result in a pale image or poor color tone. The increasing popularity of digital cameras may result in more images being captured in less than ideal conditions. Furthermore, cell phones and smart phones have increased the popularity of obtaining images. Multi-tasking devices such as smart phones may tradeoff performance to provide multiple capabilities. For example, a smart phone camera may have lower performance characteristics than a dedicated camera device. These developments may increase the number of non-ideal images.